Before “Saving Private Ryan,” Steven Spielberg directed the 1979 film “1941” about the panic in Los Angeles after the 7 December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor and an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine attempting to find an honorable target in Los Angeles. Toshiro Mifune plays the sub commander Akiro Mitamura. A German officer, Capt. Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt (Christopher Lee), is also on board. Mifune speaks his dialogue in Japanese. Lee, in German. They seem to understand each other. Why is never explained, but I suppose it is meant to be funny, but the Asian American erasure in this film is not a laughing matter at all.

Besides Mifune, the film includes Japan-born actor Hiroshi Shimizu as Ito and Akio Mitamura as Ashimoto. Mitamura plays a Chinese pilot in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”  Mifune would have been 17 when Japan was at war with China and 21 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  Mifune was born in China and had served in the Imperial Japanese Army Aviation division in the aerial photography unit during World War II.

Lee, who was British,  also served in the military (Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer).

The Plot

The film begins by setting the scene:

On December 7, 1941, the Naval Air Arm of the Imperial Japanese Fleet, in a surprise attack, struck the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor and hurtled an unsuspecting America into World War II.

American citizens were stunned, shocked and outraged at this treacherous attack. On the West Coast, paranoia gripped the entire population as panic-stricken citizens were convinced that California was the next target of the Imperial Japanese Forces.

Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, Commander of the Army Third Corps, was given the responsibility of defending Southern California. Army and Marines units were mobilized. Anti-aircraft defense batteries were manned and made ready. Civilian Defense operations sprang into action.

For the first time since the Civil War, American citizens prepared to defend their homeland against an enemy whose first assault was expected anywhere, at any time and in any force…

Six days after the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor (13 December 1941 at 7:01 a.m.), an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine under the command of Akiro Mitamura (Mifune) with Kriegsmarine office Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt amongst the crew members, surfaces off the California coast. Mitamura wants to destroy Hollywood.

In Los Angeles, members of the Armored Division M3 Lee tank crew–Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd), Corporal Chuck Sitarski (Treat Williams) and Privates Foley (John Candy), Reese (Mickey Rourke) and Henshaw (Walter Olkewicz) are having breakfast at a Los Angeles cafe where Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco) and Dennis DeSoto (Perry Lang) work. Sitarski starts a fight with Wally.

Elsewhere US Air Force Captain Wild Bill Kelso (John Belushi) is flying around in his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in search of Japanese forces while in Los Angeles, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell (Robert Stack) is trying to calm the public. His aide, Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) accidentally causes a bomb to explode while Stilwell is presiding over a press conference at Daugherty Field in Long Beach. The explosion scares but does not harm Stilwell and the reporters.

The hijinks involves prune juice and a compass, scanning the horizon for enemy aircrafts from a Ferris wheel, a brawl at a dance contest between enlisted men and zoot suiters and an aircraft landing in the La Brea Tarpits.

The film disgusted me when it began with a naked blonde girl (Denise Cheshire) skinny dipping (in December) and the phallic symbolism of the submarine but angered me when I realized the extent to which the history of Asian Americans in Los Angeles was conveniently lost.

Historical Background

Los Angeles County has a history of anti-East Asian sentiments that predated Japanese immigration. Los Angeles was the site of the one of the bloodiest massacres against Asians in the US (LA Chinatown Massacre, 24 October 1871). Chinese had been run out of towns in the West, including in California and places like Pasadena (6 November 1885).  Legislation against the Chinese, Japanese and Asian Indians prevented them from becoming naturalized citizens and from owning land.

In 1940, there were 5,330 Chinese Americans in Los Angeles and 36,390 Japanese Americans (1% of the population). Together (41,720), they were 1.4% of the Los Angeles population, but they heavily figured in the racist legislation of the time. In 1913, California enacted its first alien land law which would later be strengthened and bar the leasing of land by non-citizens, the land ownership by American-born children of Asian immigrant parents or by corporations controlled by Asian immigrants. California was not alone, but this film is about California and specifically the Los Angeles area.

• The Roots of Anti-Asian Violence Can Be Found in California History (22 March 2021)
• Before It Embraced Immigrants, California Championed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (9 February 2017)

Directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay written by Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future”) and Bob Gale (“Back to the Future”), the film “1941”  never acknowledges the anti-East Asian actions at both the federal and state level that led to Japanese animosity toward the US. Like most US-made World War II films, the narrative never answers why Japan went from US and UK ally in the Boxer Rebellion and World War I to its enemy in World War II.

The film “1941” is partially based on the Battle of Los Angeles or the Great Los Angeles Air Raid (24-25 February 1942) that actually involved meteorological balloons, the bombardment of Ellwood (23 February 1942) and the Zoot Suit Riots (3-8 June 1943).

• Attack on Ellwood (19 October 2014)
• The Bombardment of Ellwood in 1924 (21 February 2022)
• Forgotten History; 30th Anniversary of the Day Santa Barbara Was Shelled by a Japanese Sub (23 February 2022)

Major General Joseph W. Stilwell was an actual person who did command during World War II.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, in the actual city of Los Angeles as well as many other cities in California, the ethnic Japanese leaders were gathered up and incarcerated as security risks.

Hours after the attack, U.S. security personnel began rounding up and arresting prominent Japanese Americans—businessmen, journalists, teachers, and civic officials—as security risks. Within a week, more than 2,000 Issei, the leaders of the Japanese American community, were behind bars. The press responded with a wave of paranoid hysteria, publishing virulent attacks on Japanese Americans and demonizing them as spies, saboteurs, and enemy agents. More ad hoc internments followed, and Japanese Americans throughout the West Coast began to be forced out of their jobs, subjected to warrantless military searches, and abused and attacked in public places.

According to Densho, “more than 5,500 Issei men were eventually picked up and held as potential threats to national security. Most of these men were taken first to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention stations and then to Department of Justice (DOJ) internment camps to undergo hearings.”

What happened to those people?

Officially, these internment cases were given individual legal review, but in practice, the majority of issei were imprisoned without evidence that they posed any threat to national security. Internees were not allowed legal representation. Approximately 1,700 were “released” to War Relocation Authority (WRA) incarceration camps after these hearings, but most were transferred to U.S. Army internment camps.

The Executive Order 9066 was issued on 19 February 1942. Somehow, I don’t think this film is funny if you understand what actually happened, but the history of Japanese Americans seems to be totally erased from this depiction of Los Angeles. Little Tokyo was first settled in 1885 according to the National Park Service entry on  Little Tokyo Historic District.

That means the Battle of Los Angeles or the Great Los Angeles Air Raid (24-25 February 1942) happened after the Issei had been rounded up and the so-called battle came soon after EO 9066 was issued.

While anti-East Asian sentiment began long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, other East Asians such as the Chinese and Korean Americans were concerned about the Japanese Imperial Forces before December 1941. Chinese American pilots were being trained in Los Angeles.

After Chinese forces occupied Manchuria in 1932, training pilots for military duty in China became a mission of the Chinese American community. Chinese American aviation schools opened in San Francisco, New York, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Boston often under the auspices of the Chinese Aeronautical Association. About two hundred Chinese American men and women trained at these centers and then went to China for aviation careers.

Los Angeles was also the home of the family of Ahn Chang Ho (안창호). His wife, Helen Ahn and their children lived in the house from 1937 to 1946 and the place served as gathering place for the Korean American community at that time.

One of the most decorated Asian American officers was also born in Los Angeles: Young Oak Kim. Kim would serve as an officer in the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and, during the Korean War, the 31st Infantry Regiment.

The film “1941” exists as if there was no rampant anti-East Asian prejudice in Los Angeles and the population had no established enclaves of people of East Asian descent. The existence of racism and lynching in an area or an era doesn’t mean a comedy could not be made about that time if we look at other examples such as the Oscar-winning 1997 Italian film, “Life Is Beautiful” (La vita è Bella)  or the more recent English-language film “Jojo Rabbit.” Both of these award-winning films grapple with the horrors of prejudice and racism instead of ignoring it or pretending it did not exist.

By erasing the history of East Asians in Los Angeles, the film also prevents us from truly understanding the full implications of not only the attack on Pearl Harbor but war hysteria. The simplistic yellow perilism becomes an explanation as to why one time allies became enemies. Moreover, the history of East Asian Americans in the initial stages of the Pacific War is also erased. The film “1941” can be considered racist because of this whitewashing of history.

It also helps to remember that Pearl Harbor wasn’t located in an area that had been predominately White. In 1940, Hawaii had 112,087 people who were considered White, but 157,905 Japanese, 28,179 Chinese, 52,569 Filipino, 64,310 Native Hawaiian and 6,851 Korean. Japanese were 37 percent of the population of Hawaii, despite the 1889 lynching of Katsu Goto (後藤濶).

The film “1941” had its world premiere on 13 December 1979 at the Cinema Dome in Hollywood and was released in the US 14 December 1979.